Re: it is very slow to get command prompt after entering the password when logging thru putty (ssh)

Can you identify where the slowness happens? Does it happen before /etc/profile starts, or somewhere within /etc/profile or your personal login script?Add some commands like:

echo "in the beginning of /etc/profile"

to various locations in the login scripts, then try to locate the point where the system spends a lot of time.

One common reason for slow logins is a large wtmp file (/var/log/wtmp in most Linuxes). This usually affects all logins, not only SSH logins. In this case, the slowness usually happens before /etc/profile starts executing.

The wtmp file records all login/logout events. The system must search through it to find & display the last login times. The bigger the file is, the more time the login procedure takes.

RedHat systems have a cron job that periodically truncates the wtmp file (using logrotate to archive a few old versions). This prevents it from ever getting too big. You should check if SuSE has ready-made scripts or cron jobs to manage the wtmp file, and consider enabling them. If there is nothing, write your own.